


Popularity Isn't That Great

by yuto_da



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Dating, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Neglect, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, adorable mingyu, adorable woozi, depressed jeong, hard times await them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 23:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10841418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuto_da/pseuds/yuto_da
Summary: Jeonghan and Mingyu are a couple but things don't look well in their relationship.orJeonghan feels neglected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Heyoo!! I wrote this because i have a sudden undying love for these boys and Mingyu has bedroom eyes for Jeonghan and they look so good together. This is my first time writing for SVT but i hope i did it well.
> 
> Unbeta-d but will be beta-d soon.

He knew Mingyu was getting more popular as he days went by. The commercial offers, the random appearances in famous idol bands, the acting gigs all attested to Mingyu’s growing popularity and Jeonghan was happy for him, he was happy that one of them was doing so well and his tremendous amount of talent was finally being recognized but at the same time, he was hurt and envious.

He was envious of the people who’d get to spend so much time with the younger man. He was envious of how they would get more time with Mingyu than him who was his boyfriend. And he was hurt by how even though Mingyu tried his best to make time for Jeonghan, time for them to go out and _talk_ and be a proper couple and do what couples do, Mingyu always ended up cancelling because of a sudden need for him at some modeling studio. And while Jeonghan was under the thought that he was hiding his emotions well, laughing and joking around with the other members, he was wrong because Jihoon noticed.

“Jeonghan,” Jihoon called out to the taller male and gestured with his head for Jeonghan to follow him into a less crowded and noisy room.

Jeonghan turned to Jihoon and stood up from his position on the floor with Hoshi’s head in his lap. He followed Jihoon to another room and shut the door behind him. Jeonghan looked at Jihoon confusedly. It was rare for the short male to pull one of the members aside to talk to them as they practically shared everything.

“Yeah?” Jeonghan asked Jihoon.

“I have been meaning to talk to you, Jeonghan.” Jihoon said seriously. He took a seat down on the ground and crossed his legs in front of him, looking up at Jeonghan till the long-haired male followed in his example and sat down. It wasn’t unusual for Jihoon to become serious as he was considered the most serious member of the group. What was unusual is for him to become serious around Jeonghan.

“What did you want to talk about?" Jeonghan asked casually. He was expecting Jihoon to talk to him about their upcoming song and so, he was unprepared for Jihoon’s actual question.

“It’s about you and Mingyu.” Jihoon said. “I’ve noticed you two haven’t talked much recently.”

“No, we’ve talked.” Jeonghan said slightly defensive. He was beginning to suspect that Jihoon knew of his mixed emotions towards Mingyu’s sudden –but not surprising- fame. Jeonghan knew from past experiences that Jihoon could be incredibly perceptive at times and while that tended to be useful in the group, it was also rather bothersome.

Jihoon looked at him disbelievingly.

Jeonghan ran a hand through his fiery red hair. He didn’t quite like the fiery red color on his hair but Mingyu had complimented him and said that he looked rather cute with it, that the bright red color contrasted very nicely with his pale skin and Jeonghan hadn’t found it in him to change the color.

“We’ve talked, just not as much.” Jeonghan said. “It’s understandable since he has many job offers and I want him to take them seriously.” He finished while looking at a piece of gum wrapper that was discarded in one of the corners in the room.

The sound of Chan, Seokmin and Soonyoung laughing filtered into the room and Jihoon glanced up at the door, half-expecting one of them to open the door and walk in. They didn’t.

“He has become popular,” Jihoon said more to himself than to Jeonghan. “But what I wanted to talk to you about wasn’t Mingyu’s fame.” Jihoon looked at Jeonghan again and he couldn’t help but furrow his eyebrows in worry. The older male was normally cheerful and cheeky –and extremely lazy- but lately he hadn’t been any of those –except for the laziness, that never ended no matter how many times he tried to stop it-. Jihoon could see how the anxiety of their upcoming song was taking a toll on Jeonghan and he didn’t like seeing Jeonghan looking so… Jihoon lacked the words to express how Jeonghan looked at that moment.

“Are you okay?” Jihoon asked, fully letting the worry he felt show in his voice and in his expression. “I don’t think the others notice it but you don’t look well, Jeonghan.”

Jeonghan was rather touched by Jihoon’s obvious worry for his wellbeing. It wasn’t that Jihoon didn’t care for the members –they could all attest to how much Jihoon cared for them- but he didn’t show it very much and Jeonghan knew he must have looked unsightly if Jihoon had noticed and pulled him aside to question him about it.

“I’m fine, just tired from practice.” Jeonghan said with a small smile on his lips. He looked away from the wrapper and to the shorter male and saw the look of worry was still firm on Jihoon’s face. “Really, I’m fine, I just need to sleep and I’ll be okay.”

Jihoon could tell Jeonghan was lying to him but he didn’t want to hold the older male back from getting some rest, so he nodded his head and rearranged his facial expression to a wide smile. Jihoon wanted to ask Jeonghan more questions but he figured he’d do that later, for now, he and Jeonghan needed to get some rest.

“Okay, let’s go sleep.” Jihoon stood up from the ground and walked to Jeonghan, offering a hand for the older male to grab and pull himself up with. Jeonghan took the offered hand and pulled himself up. He knew Jihoon was still going to ask him more questions but he was grateful that it wasn’t at that moment.

The two left the room and went to Jeonghan, Seungcheol and Joshua’s room. Luckily for them, the rest of the group were playing in the living room and weren’t making noise in the bedroom so when they laid their heads on the pillows, sleep came very quickly.

 

Mingyu returned to the dorm very late. It was almost one in the morning when he was rummaging in his pockets for the house keys. He sighed in relief when he found them and quickly unlocked the door before entering and locking it again.

He let out a wide yawn and paused for a second before resuming to walk in the direction of the living room. He found Jun, Hansol, Seungcheol and MingHao sleeping on the couches. MingHao and Jun were cuddled together on one of the couches with a blanket draped over their bodies. Hansol was huddled on one of the single-seat couches with two blankets around him and Seungcheol was sleeping on the three-seated couch with Chan stretching his feet to the older male’s face and vice versa.

Mingyu moved forward a bit and saw there were two bodies sleeping on the floor. From the wild green-blue hair and the limbs spread on top of the body with green-blue hair, Mingyu guessed the two bodies were Soonyoung and Seokmin. He saw the television was still on and he walked through the mess of blankets and legs to grab the remote and turn the television off.

Mingyu saw the blanket covering Seungcheol and Chan had shifted and was exposing their bodies to the cold night air. He bent down and grabbed the blanket and covered them properly before walking through the mess of blankets and legs on the floor and going to the bedrooms. He passed Seungkwan, Hansol and Wonwoo’s bedroom and Mingyu guessed since he didn’t see Seungkwan and Wonwoo in the living room; they were most likely asleep in their room.

Mingyu thought about going to sleep in his, Jihoon and Jun’s room but for some reason –probably the lack of contact from the older male- Mingyu didn’t want to sleep in his bed. He wanted to sleep next to Jeonghan. He wanted to feel the older male’s warmth against his skin. Mingyu wanted a lot of things but he felt that Jeonghan wouldn’t like it if he woke up to find Mingyu –his boyfriend who had been more of acquaintance than a boyfriend- asleep beside him and so, Mingyu turned on his heel and walked into his room.

“Jesus!” Mingyu almost jumped out of his skin when he saw in the bottom bunk bed where Jihoon usually slept, someone was sitting up and looking directly at him.

“You’ve returned right now?” The person, Mingyu recognized the short stature, Jihoon asked with a yawn.

“Yeah,” Mingyu answered. “Jihoon-hyung, what are you doing awake?”

“I heard you open the door and thought it was Jun.” Jihoon replied.

Mingyu thought it was weird why Jihoon would want to talk to Jun at one in the morning but didn’t question the older male. They stayed in silence for a moment and Mingyu was beginning to get uncomfortable. He was about to change out of his clothes and go to sleep when Jihoon spoke.

“You’re hurting him.”

Mingyu hesitated and thought who Jihoon was talking about when it hit him. _Jeonghan._

“I understand you’re busy and don’t have much time but don’t you think the least you could do is at least be there when he wakes up today,” Jihoon said before turning his back to Mingyu and going back to sleep leaving Mingyu standing there in shock.

The last thing Jihoon heard before falling asleep was the sound of the door opening and closing shut.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The calm before the hailstorm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone's wondering, this is set after '13 castaway boys' but if i get any detail wrong about their hair or something, please inform me so that i can change it. Otherwise, here is chapter two of Popularity isn't that great!

Jeonghan stirred in his sleep. He tried to turn around but found he was unable to due to the pair of muscular arms holding him in place. Jeonghan thought it was Seungcheol and was about to smack the older male’s hands away when the owner of said arms shifted and tightened his grip on Jeonghan’s waist.

“Jeonghan…”

Jeonghan froze entirely in Mingyu’s arms. ‘ _When did he come back?’_

Jeonghan knew the return of Mingyu was the least of his worries as the sudden strange urge to run took first priority. But he pushed the urge away and tried waking up the younger male.

“Mingyu! Mingyu, wake up.”  Jeonghan pinched the skin on Mingyu’s forearm multiple times in a useless attempt to wake the younger man. After a few more pinches Jeonghan decided to give up. Mingyu tended to sleep deeply –deeper than Jeonghan himself- when he was tired and guessing from the probably very late hour he returned, chances were Mingyu wasn’t going to be waking up any time soon and Jeonghan sighed and resided to finding a more comfortable position and following Mingyu to sleep.

                                                                                                            --------------------

The next time Jeonghan woke up he didn’t have Mingyu’s arms around him.

He stretched lazily on the bed before swinging his legs over and placing them on the ground. Yawning widely he stood up and walked out of the room, heading in the direction of the kitchen where he guessed most of the others had already woken up due to the loud noises coming from the kitchen.

Jeonghan walked into the kitchen and let out a small laugh at the sight that greeted him.

Mingyu was wearing a blue and white checked apron and was making something that smelled divine while talking with Joshua who, like Mingyu, had an apron on –only his was green and white- and was mixing something in a bowl. Soonyoung and Jun were sitting on stools and were laughing with Seungkwan and Wonwoo.

The problem was they were all covered with flour. Soonyoung, Jun, Wonwoo and Seungkwan all had various patches of white on their faces and clothes. Soonyoung had a white handprint on his forehead, Jun had two white handprints on his cheeks, and Wonwoo had one on his cheek and majority of his hair had been dyed white and Seungkwan seemed to have taken the worst of the four, his entire head had been dyed white and occasionally when he would shake his head, Jeonghan saw bits of flour falling to his clothes and the ground.

“What happened here?” Jeonghan asked with laughter in his voice.

They all turned to face Jeonghan and Seungkwan and Joshua greeted him with a cheery ‘good morning’.

“We tried to make American pancakes.” Joshua helpfully supplied before going back to mixing.

“It didn’t go well,” Jun said with a wide smile on his face.

“That’s because you added pepper to the mix!” Soonyoung said, smacking the side of Jun’s shoulder with his hand.

“How was I supposed to know adding pepper would make the entire thing black!” Jun defended himself and caused Seungkwan and Wonwoo to fall to the ground laughing.

“Of course it would if you, who used the pepper the last, forgot to screw the cap on properly and it ended up falling into the mix!” Soonyoung argued back.

Seungkwan and Wonwoo laughed even harder.

“You tried putting pepper into pancakes?” Jeonghan asked disbelievingly.

“And not only that,” Joshua added in milk to his mixture and began mixing it again. “Before that, they’d put four spoons of salt and half a spoon of sugar, so the entire mix was extremely salty.” Joshua and Mingyu’s faces cringed in disgust at the memory.

Seungkwan and Wonwoo had been getting off the flour when Jeonghan had questioned his friends sanity but fell back down when Joshua explained even further. Jeonghan paid them no mind.

“And before that, they had forgotten to check the expiry date of the milk and poured two week old milk in.” Mingyu finished with an even deeper cringe at the memory.

“Hey! It’s not our fault we can’t cook, is it, JunHui?” Soonyoung defended himself and Jun and turned to the other male for backup.

“Hey! Why are you speaking so informally to your senior?” Jun asked Soonyoung and the entire kitchen exploded into laughter.

Eventually, Seungcheol, Hansol, Seokmin, Jihoon, Chan and MingHao woke up and found proper looking American pancakes waiting for them and while Mingyu and Joshua were praised for their combined skills, Jun and Soonyoung were left to clean up the mess made by themselves in the kitchen.

Mingyu loved times like these. He treasured them deeply and he knew the other members did as well. Times when there was no rushing off to practice or to a TV show or to the studio, just them in their house, laughing and simply being themselves. Mingyu loved times like those because he could relax and unwind and simply be ‘Kim Mingyu’ the person not ‘Kim Mingyu’, the rapper in Seventeen.

He was currently relaxing on the three-seat couch with Hansol and Soonyoung. Mingyu had his legs stretched out on Hansol lap and Hansol had his feet on the ground next to Seokmin and Soonyoung, like Mingyu, had his legs stretched out on Hansol’s lap and Wonwoo sat on the ground slightly beside Soonyoung’ seat facing Seungcheol while Chan who sat on the ground as well next to Mingyu and was facing Jeonghan who was mimicking their seating arrangement.

Joshua sat on the couch with Seungkwan and Jihoon occupied the remaining single-seat couch with Jun and MingHao sitting down on the two stands of the couch respectively.

They were trying to discuss what to do since there were no events, studios or TV shows for them to attend.

“Let’s go to an amusement park!” Soonyoung excitedly said.

Chan, Seokmin and Jun readily agreed with Soonyoung’s suggestion.

“No, I saw they were closed down for a few weeks,” Jeonghan stopped them before they got too excited and suggested something that seemed temperature-friendly and –possibly- wouldn’t give any of them a cold. “We could go hiking. I think a nice long hike up some hills would be great for all of us.”

“It has been a while since we’ve gone hiking,” Seungkwan agreed with Jeonghan and the rest followed in the brown-haired example. Jun disentangled himself from MingHao and removed his phone from his pants pocket. He quickly searched the best place to go hiking and found one a few kilometers from their dorm; it wouldn’t be a long drive from the dorm to the hiking area. Jun informed the rest of the boys and they began getting up and going to change into warmer, more appropriate clothes for the activity they were going to engage in.

After a few minutes, they all assembled in front of the door and after Seungcheol checked everything and made sure they weren’t forgetting anything, they climbed into their van and were driven to the hiking area.

They descended from the vehicle and walked the short distance to where they had to pay and get a guide and some hiking materials. The guide decided to make things a bit more interesting and broke them down to groups of two. Hansol and Joshua were together as well as Wonwoo and Chan, Seokmin and Jihoon, Soonyoung was with Seungcheol, MingHao was with Jun and Mingyu was with Jeonghan leaving Seungkwan to be with the guide.

They were advised that while there wasn’t anything particularly dangerous around that area, it wasn’t advisable to wander off. The guide, a nice middle-aged man, gave all the groups maps and he instructed them on the different paths they can go but they all lead to one place so even if they got lost if they followed the map, they’d find each other at the end and with a few more instructions, the boys were allowed to go hiking separately.

                                                                                                 ---------------------

“Do you think they’ll be okay?” Soonyoung asked Seungcheol hesitantly. The younger male shot a look at the older male and was surprised to see a serious look on Seungcheol face. It wasn’t rare for Seungcheol to get serious but this was unlike anything Soonyoung had ever seen.

“I don’t know, Hoshi, I really don’t know.” Seungcheol replied. He didn’t need Soonyoung to elaborate on what he was asking as he was thinking the same thing.

They all were.

                                                                                                ----------------------

Mingyu felt unbelievably awkward being in Jeonghan’s presence, never mind the fact that he went to sleep in the older male’s bed last night – _early_ _today? -_ . He racked his brain for anything to say but couldn’t think of something other than some lame line that would probably get him kicked.

“How have you been, Jeonghan-hyung?”  He still said it out loud and he was right, it earned him a relatively harsh kick to the back of his thighs.

Jeonghan didn’t answer Mingyu’s question and continued walking down the trail they choose to follow. He was holding the map and Mingyu was –Jeonghan had refused but Mingyu had insisted till he gave in- carrying both of their hiking materials on his back. Jeonghan thought they were heavy but he knew the stubborn male wouldn’t give in and let him carry a few so he didn’t mention it and kept walking for a short while in silence.

 

“How are you doing with the recent flurry of job offers?” Jeonghan suddenly asked Mingyu who jumped on the sudden start of conversation faster than Hansol did to sweet potatoes.

“It’s hard,” Mingyu said with a sigh and Jeonghan turned to face the younger male. “But I understand how important it is, not only for me but for Seventeen that I do my best and so I’m working hard.” Mingyu finished with a small smile that barely showed the pretty, unnaturally long canines that Jeonghan loved.

And Jeonghan was hit by a sudden wave of intense dislike towards himself. Mingyu was working hard, trying to promote Seventeen and all that he was doing was just whining about it and second-guessing his decisions. Jeonghan couldn’t believe how selfish he was being.

“I’m sorry.”

Mingyu looked at Jeonghan confusedly. “What are you apologizing for, hyung?”

“For kicking you, it wasn’t…I shouldn’t have done it.”

Mingyu laughed a bright loud sound that never failed to make Jeonghan smile a little bit as well. “It’s okay; it’s my own fault for asking a stupid question like that.” Mingyu grabbed Jeonghan’s hand and interlaced their fingers together. He still had that smile on his lips only it was wider and brighter than faux smile from before. “I’m just happy you’re not mad at me.”

“Who says I’m not mad?” Jeonghan cheekily said back.

Mingyu had the most scared and scandalized look on his face after hearing Jeonghan’s words and Jeonghan couldn’t hold back his laughter.

                                                                                     ---------------------

A few hours passed and eventually all the split groups re-grouped at the area the guide had previously shown them. Mingyu and Jeonghan came in last, having have gotten lost three times –almost four had it not been for Hansol and Joshua stumbling upon the lost duo- before finally arriving at the aforementioned spot.

“You guys took so long! What happened?” Soonyoung was the first to question Mingyu and Jeonghan.

“Well, Jeonghan-hyung got tired halfway through so we rested for a few minutes then he said he was hungry so I had to prepare a snack for him then he had to rest for a while before he could continue-“Mingyu explained to Soonyoung and the rest of the group who majority broke down laughing at Mingyu because they knew –from experience- how lazy Jeonghan could be after he’d eaten.

“Why is the one who suggested the whole thing the last one to arrive?” Chan asked to no one in particular but that just unleashed another round of laughter between the group and while Jeonghan tried defending himself from his members, Mingyu was laughing along with them and telling them more of what happened during their hike.

 And they still hadn’t let go of each other’s hands.

But, Jeonghan guessed he should have seen it coming. The times that followed were just the calm before the storm and it was heading straight for Seventeen.


End file.
